Metaverse was all the buzz in 2021 and was touted to be the next big thing in the technological world. Reports stated that the global Metaverse market is most likely to reach nearly $1 trillion by 2030, registering a 39.8% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). However, the Metaverse concept in 2022 is nothing but dying as virtual land trading has dropped 98% this year.
What seems to be confirming that the Metaverse concept is dying is that DappRadar, a tool that provides insights into decentralized applications, published data claiming that Decentraland gets less than 50 active users per day.
DappRadar revealed that Sandbox gets 600+ daily users, despite the projects having a market cap of more than $1 billion.
Nonetheless, Decentraland has refuted DappRadar’s claims stating that they attract more users than reported. However, Decentraland’s official numbers aren’t impressive either as they stand nowhere close to the Web2 games.
Is The Metaverse Concept Dying?
The bear markets of 2022 have been cruel to most industries and Metaverse is one of its victims. The craze to buy digital lands or play Web3 games has plummeted this year. Even leading companies that invested in the virtual reality concept suffered severe losses in the last 10 months. Facebook’s parent company Meta lost $2.8 billion in its virtual reality division during Q2 of 2022.
The trading volume for Metaverse peaked at $8 million in November 2021 but began to slump thereon. Its trading volume is down 98% from last year, as reported by Delphi Digital, which tracks virtual reality sales.
The sluggish bear markets are not the only thing that’s hitting the nail into the Metaverse coffin. The Metaverse is lagging in terms of visual graphics compared to Web2 graphics. It stands on the back foot as it needs to deliver dynamic graphics.
In conclusion, if the bear markets don’t kill the Metaverse, their visual graphics could be their undoing.